Sigils and Secrets
by storiewriter
Summary: Bentley Farkas never did mean to follow up on the rumors. They were the same baseless, friend-of-a-friend-of-a-relative garbage that Torako often told him about. Then he heard that Alcor might be involved, and he started wondering. (Transcendence-AU)


**A/N:** Have more Bentley! Transcendence-AU as usual. You have Mod Z on the transcendence-au tumblr blog to thank for the plot of this monster.

* * *

"Hey, Ben, did you hear the latest?"

Bentley looked over at the girl next to him and raised his eyebrows. "No, Torako, I didn't. I don't make a habit of eavesdropping like you do. And what happened to discussing Danielle Sainz's chances of winning this Council Chair election?"

She rolled her eyes and clicked her chopsticks at him. The sound was barely audible over the din of those having lunch in the common room around them. "Eh, we covered everything. And it's not my fault you fail to appreciate the art of investigation."

"It's called violating others' privacy," Bentley drawled, picking up a cooked slice of carrot with his own chopsticks.

"Do you want to hear it or not?" Blowing her bangs out of her eyes, she glowered at him. If she wasn't so intimidating height-wise, he might have laughed.

Bentley shrugged and spoke around the carrot in his mouth. "It's up to you. I'm not going to ask for the fruit of ill-advised ventures."

"Ill-advised, but not illegal!" Torako sang, kicking her feet enough that they tapped against Bentley's shins. "Anyways, it's pretty racy—you know how there's a pretty heavy penalty on demon summonings, right?"

"Who doesn't?" Bentley said, and did his best to not let any of his panicking thoughts about Alcor show on his face. _You didn't summon him, he just happened to you_.

Torako smirked and leaned in closer, lowering her voice. "Well, apparently Michel Temer knows somebody who's actually in a cult!"

"You mean 'a guy who knows a gal who knows a person who knows somebody else who may or may not be exaggerating about being in a cult,' right?" Bentley murmured.

"Oh hush." Torako tapped him harder on the shins. "Quit being so smart. Michel Temer _does_ know somebody who's actually in a cult! His friend's half-sibling's aunt's cousin's coworker, actually."

Bentley paused only to finish chewing his food. "I hear nothing that would suggest that I was wrong."

She glared and smacked his chopsticks away from her face. "Wow. And here I was going to tell you that the cult that Michel Temer knows somebody in might actually be connected with the biggest baddest demon of them all."

For an embarrassing moment, Bentley blanked on who that might be. "Who?"

Torako snorted. "What? You don't know? This coming from the poor kid who spent the first months of Ninth year stressing himself out over how awful _Twin Souls_ was because of the controlling undertones in the Alcorian Romance?"  
" _Twin Souls_ is a horrid abomination that the world never deserved," Bentley answered, deadpan in the way that took months of repetition to achieve.

"I still can't believe people thought a scaredy-cat like you would be connected with Alcor just 'coz your dad has weird ideas."

"So who's the biggest baddest?" Bentley figured that he was missing something very integral to the conversation here, and glanced up at Torako. "N'Daida the Gregarious is rising in infamy. Is it him?"

She was looking at him as though she couldn't believe he'd survived to this age. "Because making deals with people that end up forcing them to interact with others until they die is worse than demolishing cities and screwing peoples' lives over. No, I'm talking about Alcor."

 _Ah_. To be fair to Bentley, he'd just spent that morning watching Alcor gush over some boring book series he'd just found because apparently 'omniscience can't ruin everything for me forever.'

Bentley glanced up at the ceiling and then back at Torako several times. He started rubbing his upper arm. "Ah. Aha. Yes, him. There's a cult connected to him? Isn't that illegal?"

She was still staring at him. "And it's at times like these that I wonder if you're ever going to survive past the end of schooling. It is. What is it about _biggest baddest of them all_ that doesn't have you immediately making the connection between 'Alcor' and 'illegal'?"

Shrugging, Bentley poked at the chicken in his bento. "I dunno. Out of it. Tired."

Torako frowned, this time out of more personal concern. "You stay up late working on Papercraft commissions or on homework?"

"It was a combination of things," Bentley said, deliberately not thinking about how he'd woken up to Alcor sitting in Bentley's desk chair, looking ruffled and upset and staring at his hands in the pale glow of the holographic starscape installed in Bentley's ceiling. He didn't think about getting out of bed and pulling a stool next to the demon. He didn't think about sitting there as Alcor curled up in his desk chair, wings wrapped around himself and staring off into nothing. He didn't think about asking what was wrong, and he didn't think about Alcor's answer. _I saw you die._

He glanced up at the holographic clock in the center of the room. Just a couple minutes until they had to meander back to class.

"You probably could have stayed home today if you were so tired," Torako said, and she had laid a hand next to his. After a moment, he tapped his finger, and she moved her hand over his knuckles. When Bentley up at her eyes, she was serious.

"I'm fine," Bentley said.

She narrowed her eyes. "You missed the most obvious connection in the world and you look like the galaxy is on your shoulders. Why aren't you at home? Your dad is the best at giving you days off that you need. What are you doing here?"

A soft, soothing undulation of slow noise signaled the end of the lunch period. Bentley smiled and pulled his hand from under Torako's. "Really. Just watch me in Advanced Sigils; if I don't make all the connections I should, then feel free to bully me home."

Torako's skeptical expression didn't drop, even as she stood and Bentley was reminded that he had unfortunately inherited his father's lack of height. He chuckled a little nervously as she pointed her chopsticks at him with one hand and fastened her lunch box with the other. "I'll be watching you."

He just laughed and pulled together the remains of his lunch, trying to put the entire conversation out of his mind. It was just another one of Torako's eavesdropping investigations that had nothing to do with him, and if he didn't want her to call his dad herself, then he needed to focus entirely on sigils for the next fifty minutes.

* * *

"Hey Alcor? Do you know anybody named Michel Temer?"

Alcor didn't answer from where he was hovering upside-down by the ceiling, his coattails brushing and interrupting the feed of the holographic autumn sky. A book was pinned to his lap, the pages drooping down in accordance with gravity.

Bentley frowned at being ignored. He then thought that maybe the universe was telling him not to pursue this stupid train of thought. It was probably just a hoax, an exaggeration for somebody summoning some hyped-up dirt demon too weak to do anything more than increase the amount of dust on the floor. The more he thought about it, the more he realized that this was probably right. How many scares had been reported that only ended anticlimactically? Besides, he thought as he side-eyed Alcor, the demon never seemed to leave the damn house unless he was in human disguise.

Satisfied with this logic, he set to put the matter out of his mind and return to trudging through his basic maths materials.

"Michel Temer? What're you asking about him for?"

Bentley turned around in his chair, the seat bottom hovering two feet off the floor. "It's nothing, nevermind."

Alcor narrowed his eyes at Bentley. "Michel Temer. He's a classmate of yours, but you never really have had much contact with him. Is this about the conversation you and your friend had at lunch?"

He looked up from the chapter unit on basic banking. "Alcor. What have we said about following me at school?"

The demon looked entirely unapologetic. "It's not very good human behavior. And I usually don't! Today was an exception."

"Because…" Bentley tapped his stylus against his wrist and stared at Alcor. It was very effective in extracting information, especially when Alcor was coming down from his Yggdrasil high.

His wings twitching and fidgeting behind him, Alcor flipped over and floated down to the floor, glancing everywhere but Bentley's face. "Well. You know."

"No, I don't know," Bentley said, and there was still that part of him that was afraid of Alcor, afraid of the glints of predator and demon, that made him bite back his ire and try to explain things calmly. "I don't like obsessive behavior. I don't like feeling as though I have to look over my shoulder. We've discussed this."

He was getting tired of discussing it.

Alcor frowned a real frown, a frustrated one that he'd sported every damn time they had this conversation. "But I needed to make sure you were okay, and you weren't! Your friend was right, you should have come home."

Bentley bit down his retort about him 'not being okay' not excusing the controlling behavior Alcor was showing. "If you were so worried," he said, slowly, "then perhaps you could, next time, take advantage of the com my dad has and message me at school. Or perhaps you could talk to me instead of _stalking_ , which is frowned upon in society."

There was a short growl, and Alcor looked Bentley in the eye. "I—you—look, I had to see that you were okay! I had to make sure you were doing fine, and I can't tell that in one look, okay?"

Feeling his stomach drop, Bentley leaned back a bit in his chair. "I get it that you're worried and that's nice of you and all, but you can't just stalk me. Ask. Ask if you can visit me and I'm a lot likelier to be okay with it."

Alcor frowned and let out a long exhale. For a while, he didn't speak, just looked at the air around Bentley in a way that left the teenager oddly irritated.

"Okay," Alcor said, his wings crossing and uncrossing behind him. He didn't look at Bentley. "I'll ask."

After another awkward moment, Alcor jerked his shoulders up and then let them fall before waving at Bentley and twisting out of the material plain.

Bentley was left with a sour taste in his mouth and the niggling suspicion that Alcor had just lied. He also remembered how Alcor had never answered his initial question, even after bringing it up himself.

Viciously, he penned a strong Banishment sigil on his MSS tablet and drew its activation line in one hard stroke. Bentley felt it move out and push something from his room, and he scowled down at the notes app sitting by the course material for maths.

He looked at the fading sigil, the pixels turning blue in reaction to the expelling of a strong demonic energy signature. And he wondered.

* * *

Alcor had told him several times, upon hesitant prodding, that he had done some awful things. "The history books aren't completely right, and they're usually way off on the piddly details," he would say, "but some things they're spot-on about."

 _Spot-on_ , Bentley would learn when he asked, meant _completely accurate_.

"But I am changing!" Alcor had hastened to add. "I'm not the…well, not the demon I've been for the past few centuries. And that's a good thing, and I'm trying to be better at the humaning business."

What if some cult called on him? Bentley had asked Would he go?

"Only if the pull is strong enough. Otherwise, a couple rounds of the answering machine should give them the idea that I'm not in the mood. Hopefully."

Bentley had felt his eyebrows raise up in surprise. Demons had answering machines?

Alcor had started to look a bit upset. "Only the smart ones."

How did he figure out that he could leave answering machines? By watching humans? Bentley had figured, at that point, that Alcor just had a huge obsession with human people and their idiosyncrasies.

But Alcor looked at him as though he were looking through Bentley, and there was something in the draw of his eyes and the curve of his mouth that had reminded Bentley that Alcor was millennia old. "Not quite," he had said, and had left it at that.

Bentley did not ask about the answering machine again.

* * *

For a few days, he considered the pros and cons of tailing Michel Temer. Theoretically, he knew a durable and undetectable sigil he could attach to the guy. The problem was keeping track of where his classmate actually was on the island; connecting the sigil to a digital map would take some thinking and maneuvering of sigil components. The tricky bit, he thought while doodling sigils without their activation lines, would be maintaining the line that denoted invisibility.

He fiddled with the stylus, tracing the curves of his tenth sigil draft with his eyes. If he put the mark that would key into his personal tablet there, then it would interfere and change the durability component to a degradation one, and he didn't want to think about how that would affect Michel Temer. To the upper right might work, but it ran the risk of being too similar to a food-preservation seal, which would render everything useless. When he glanced up to the front of the classroom, Mrs. Nariwal was still discussing the ethics of artificial cross-breed children.

Frowning, he rolled the stylus between his fingers and returned his attention to the sigil in his notes app. He was missing something, he had to be. Bentley chewed at the side of his mouth, then doodled a quick Banishment sigil just in case.

It passed through the room, but pushed nothing away. Well, at least Alcor wasn't stalking him today. Or yesterday. Or the day before.

Bentley reached up with his free right hand and massaged at his temple. He drew the basic components of his sigil and their alternate forms in a row and stared at them.

After what seemed like forever, a notification popped up in the corner of his MSS. He clicked on it, then wished he hadn't.

 _What are you even working on? You haven't looked up more than twice in the past thirty minutes. Aren't you supposed to be the study genius?_

He glared at Torako out of the corner of his right eye, then scribbled a message back. _Says the person who's noticed I haven't. It's just a personal project. Nothing to be concerned about._

Torako glanced right back at him and furrowed her eyebrows. She wrote something on her MSS, and then tapped her pen on its screen. A moment later, his message app flashed, and he pulled up the new message.

 _I never mentioned anything about being concerned, just that you're acting weird. Do I need to be concerned?_

He frowned. _Your actions say you're concerned. It's fine_.

As she took her sweet time replying, Bentley looked up at the holographic display that Mrs. Nariwal was referencing. No, he didn't understand anything that was going on, but he remembered seeing something similar in the required text for the class. He could read up on it later if he figured this sigil out.

After staring at the components and trying out a number of combinations in his head, he received the message Torako had been writing. _Wow how smart. All right then, answer me this—you've been scribbling sigil ideas ever since I told you about the whole Michel Temer thing. Is that what's going on?_

He frowned and went to start another message, but she beat him to it.

 _I recognize those sigil components. What are you doing,_

He scribbled out the beginning of his sentence and started again, surreptitiously tilting his screen so that she couldn't see his notes. _None of your,_ he inserted an archaic term Alcor had mentioned several times as meaning business, _so it's fine. It's all fine._

The reply was almost instantaneous. _Durability of the Seal. Invisibility of Objects or Magical Signatures. And a combination of 'Map' and 'Tracking.' I'm third in our entire class, Ben, not stupid_.

 _And what does '_ x' _mean anyways?_

Bentley narrowed his eyes. _Just leave it be. I'm fine_.

 _This screams of being either illegal or ill-advised_. When he looked at her, Torako was staring at him without ever looking down at her MSS, stylus moving furiously.

She was kind of intimidating, he remembered, but he'd seen worse. _Pot calling kettle black much?_

 _I have no idea what that even means. Look, my point is, don't slap any experimental seals on anybody, including yourself. I'll find out your info._

His first reaction was to deny that he needed info, and his second was to deny that he was thinking of implementing an untested experimental seal on himself or other people. Then he realized that he might have paused too long, and he chanced a look at Torako.

She was smirking the most unholy smirk in his direction. The moment their eyes met, she grinned wide, like pixies did.

Bentley huffed. _All right_ , he wrote. _Your place after school_?

* * *

"I finally caught Bentley-Do-No-Wrong with his hands in the mud," Torako crowed, her arm slung around Bentley's shoulders and shaking him lightly. His MSS jostled in his hands, and he paused mid-message to his father (and therefore Alcor) to bump his shoulder into her upper ribs.

"Why do you have to walk next to me like this," he said. "And I didn't have my hands in the mud, I was just doing my own thing."

"Because you are a short adorable creature and the world deserves to know that," Torako said, and he felt the blood rush to his cheeks. As always, he didn't even know what to say to that. "Also, you _agreed_ , which means you can never question my fishin' intelligence-gathering skills."

They exited one of the few TranspoPods in the main lobby of Torako's apartment complex. "That is such a stupid colloquialism. Fishing? Really? What does fishing do with how great something is?"

Torako ruffled his hair, and he tapped out the rest of his 'at Torako's tonight maybe for dinner maybe not please tell Tyrone' message.

"Fishing is great because fish is great," she said, opening the door to the lift system by pressing her palm against the bio-scanner. "Also because fishing is catching and I am _great_ at catching information."

"Also I never promised to abstain from questioning your…well, questionable information 'catching' abilities." Bentley stepped into the lift after her, the door hissing shut just as he settled against the back wall and slipped his MSS into his bag.

"But now I have ammunition!" Torako settled her hands on her hips and grinned down at him. "Also, what's this about Tyrone? Has he finally gotten around to asking you out? Is that why you asked your dad to tell him you wouldn't be home?"

Bentley stared up at her for a few seconds, not having comprehended what had just come out of her mouth. Then he sputtered and flailed his hands. "That's not—we're not—Tyrone isn't—"

"Aha! I knew it!" Torako smacked her palms against her bare thighs and tipped her head back in laughter. "You _are_ a thing!"

"We," Bentley cleared his throat. "We aren't. Really. Tyrone is a friend. That's it. That's all that ever will come of it. Friends. Not. Romantic or sexual relationship. All platonic."

Torako frowned and stared at him until the lift arrived at her floor. Then she hummed and led him down the hallway and to her family's apartment. "Okay, that makes sense. Why does he act so distrustful whenever I'm over then?"

Bentley tipped his head to the left, and tried to ignore the stirrings of embarrassment in his chest. "Don't know. Tyrone is Tyrone, I guess."

After a moment, she tipped her head as well and placed her palm on the scanner by her door. As it was decoding her handprint, he frowned.

"Wait. How did you know I asked my dad about Tyrone?"

His friend rolled her eyes as the door slid open. "You were writing that message, and I caught the end of it."

Normally, her looking over his shoulder wouldn't be a big deal. He stopped in the doorway anyhow. "What."

She turned back to him and reached out to tug him out of the way of the door, eyes mid-roll. "It's not that big of a d—"

He stepped back and narrowed his eyes. "No. Torako. It is."

To her credit, Torako became immediately serious and backed off to the rear of the entryway. She toed off her shoes and slid them to the side with her feet "Okay. Sorry about that, man."

Bentley waited a bit, then entered the apartment and let the door slide shut. He clutched his bag with his right hand and traced a banishing sigil on his shorts. The energy pulsed and scoured the room. Nothing.

When he looked up at Torako, she was just raising her eyes from where he'd traced the sigil. "Wha—if you don't mind me asking, what was that?"

"Precaution," he said, bending down to untie his laces. "I've been having nightmares, so I just check out every new place and Banish unwanted presences."

"You've been _what_?"

"I know," he muttered. "I know. I shouldn't Banish so much. It's just a rudimentary one that punches more than it demolishes, so the energy input isn't that high. Plus, we're in an energy-rich environment; why shouldn't I take advantage of it?"

The white tile was cool through the fabric of his socks. He picked up his shoes and placed them next to Torako's haphazardly piled sandals, compared the swirling green and blue designs on his to the dark brown tones in the fake leather straps. The straight edges contrasted nicely with the curvilinear nature of the pattern on his, and he thought that the colors would work well together on something more abstract.

"That theory isn't meant to sustain the millions of sigils you've been activating," Torako said, and the rustle of clothing had Bentley look up to see her crouching in front of him. "It's going to wear you out faster. You gotta get some rest. Why not invest in a more permanent fix? Get one inscribed in carnelian or hematite, wear it around your neck. It might keep the Nightmares away."

Bentley looked back down at the floor. "Reasons," he muttered.

Torako sighed, and then she put her hand on his shoulder. It was light enough that he could easily shrug it off, but he didn't. "Okay. You have reasons. I get that."

He smiled up at her and held out a hand, palm up. "Thanks. Help me up?"

"I can do better than that." Without warning, that pixie-grin returned to her face and she lunged forward, scooping him up and heaving him over her shoulder. He let out a yelp of surprise and tried to push himself back upright using her back as leverage.

"Torako!"

She let out a cackle and swung around so that Bentley was no longer staring at the porch door and the sunlight streaming in, but rather at the back of the front door and the security holo hovering to its left. He had to clutch to her shirt to keep his balance. "Fear me, the mighty Huntress Torako Green!"

" _Torakoooo_ ," he yowled as she turned the corner and cut through the living room to enter the hallway. "Let me down!"

Torako just hefted him higher up onto her shoulder, which was digging into his hip. "Never! You are my spoils of combat!"

Bentley groaned and flopped over, arms as crossed as he could get them while upside-down. "What combat?" he grumbled. "Let me down."

"Too late," she said, and he didn't even need to see her face to know she was smirking. They passed through to her room, and he was unceremoniously dropped on her bed as she nudged the door shut with her foot.

"Um," Bentley said, sitting up and cursing his horrid tendency to be picked up and carted places, "the last time you did that, didn't your parents come rushing in to make sure that you weren't, like, molesting me?

Torako scoffed and flopped down next to him. "They'll be fine. The worst that happens is they interrupt again and we have a split-second heads-up to shut our mouths."

He frowned and pulled his bag up to rest on his lap to unzip the storage compartment. "Sitting on the bed together won't help their assumptions."

"The closed door already does that!" Torako protested, nudging him in his side with her elbow. He squirmed away and giggled a little, fingers slipping on the surface of his MSS. "My parents are under the assumption that I am going to eat you or something. Since the first day!"

"They know you well," Bentley said, thumbing the device on and waiting for it to gather ambient energy and fully engage. "You said you were on board with this stupid investigation stuff?"

"Of course," Torako said, and he saw her stretch out of the corner of his eye. "Help me make a plan and we can do this thing. The two of us, teaming up? World had better watch out."

Bentley smirked and flipped the stylus out of the edge of the MSS. He was just about to open his notes when Torako put a hand on his right. Stylus still poised at the edge of the screen, he looked at her fully.

"First, though, if you—if you can," she looked over at the side of the room, and then back at him, "can you tell me why you're doing this? Bentley keep-my-head-down-and-out-of-demonic-crap Farkas, trying to hunt down a cult?"

He bit his lip, and then looked away. "I'm sorry. It's personal."

Torako inhaled and then let out a long breath. "That's fine. I trust you."

Guilt curled around his heart, and he very nearly told her. Then he remembered Alcor, and he remembered that summoning demons or withholding knowledge of somebody summoning a demon carried a heavy sentence, and he kept his mouth shut.

A rapid heartbeat later, Torako leaned over his shoulder and began to talk in his ear. "So! About Michel Temer—I've got a couple classes with him, and I'm sure I can sneak a recording sigil onto him. Those are my specialty you know, and they're really handy buggers…"

* * *

Working with Torako was kind of fun. The investigation business was really interesting, if not highly stressful, and Bentley was sure for a while that it would never end. That they'd spend afternoons and evenings and nights sorting through information and listening into Michel Temer's conversations, no matter how boring or insightful. That they would forever live off the thrill of coming close enough to the strangers from those conversations to slip a sigil from paper or pixels into the weave of their clothes or the cells of their skin. That Torako would record and interview and discover and Bentley would design sigils and bump into their unsuspecting targets and get off with nothing more than a surprised exclamation and a teasing warning.

Then it ended.

* * *

"Hey, so the thing we were talking about the other day," Torako said, more subdued than Bentley had seen her in a long time. They were even sitting in her parents' pocket-dimension garden, the fake sun shining down on them and sending artificial warmth through their skin and into their marrow.

"The…the Michel Temer thing?" Bentley stopped munching on his Fish Chips and wiped the salty crumbs on the fabric of his skirt. "What is—is something wrong?"

Torako's face was drawn. "I've been poking around and I'm not sure that we should keep this investigation up."

Pursing his lips, Bentley stared at the fake sand under their feet. He dug his toes through it and lifted them, and the sand slowly began to reform into the perfectly-raked pattern it had been in before. It too held that artificial warmth.

"Does it have to do with the missing people the Scragglers keep telling the Guard about?" He finally asked, gut starting to clench.

There was a short silence from Torako, and then she said, "Yeah. They—there's been nothing about having summoned Alcor, but word is that this group is still working on it."

Bentley frowned. Alcor had been quieter the last few days, he had looked more stressed and under the weather, and while he didn't think that Alcor had gone to a summoning, ignoring one was probably hard. Alcor was getting better, but who knew? The promise of blood, of human flesh and human soul and chaos in the world might lure him back, and then Bentley would be in danger, his dad would be in danger, and Alcor…

"Do you know where they are? We narrowed it down to the Shipyard, but is there anything beyond that?"

" _Bentley_."

He looked up through his bleached bangs at his friend, who was staring at him with fear and horror in the set of her eyes. He said nothing.

"Bentley, don't. Please."

Bentley weighed the pros and cons of his next actions, and then sighed, shoulders drooping. He looked away from her and stared at the green door in the middle of the pocket dimension's little patio. "Sorry. I won't. But do we know anything about it?"

"That doesn't convince me." Torako shifted beside him, then ruffled a hand through his hair. "It really doesn't."

He titled his head to the side in a non-answer, then looked at her out of the corner of his eye. "I just…we've spent a lot of time working on this. You especially! I just…I'd just like to _know_ , you know."

The weight of her hand on his head was almost as heavy as the stone growing somewhere between his stomach and his heart. They were both quiet for a while, staring at the peaceful, fake, too-perfect garden around them.

Bentley dragged his toes through the sand, watched the sand shift and try to cover the chaos he was stirring up. He dragged against the weave, back and forth and back and forth, and watched the sand struggle to keep up. The fake sun was warm against his neck, and Torako's hand on his head was the most real thing in this place.

Then it slid off his scalp, trailed down the back of his neck in an odd gesture, and he wondered what it was supposed to mean when Torako nudged him in the arm with her fist.

"Yeah, it's on the North side, close to the coastline. At least, that's what I've been able to garner—I'll be disengaging the eavesdropping sigils tonight, all right?"

"Yeah," he said, and he was surprised that the guilt wasn't crawling out of him through his voice. "Sounds good. Hey, are we still on for tomorrow night even if we're not doing this detective thing?"

When he looked at her, she was grinning, easy and mischievous and _right_. "Of course! You want to watch the latest interactive vid?"

"Of course!" The smile he gave her came too easily, but he justified it by saying that he had to do it, he had to make sure that this cult was shut down before something disastrous happened. If Torako wasn't in danger, well, all the better.

The fake sun beat down on them, and the sweat that beaded at his hairline and in the palm of his hands wasn't entirely because of the heat.

* * *

It was pleasantly cool that night. Bentley was wearing his darkest clothing, which had been a feat in and of itself—he actually had to borrow one of his dad's jackets because all of his were varying shades of bright or light. As it was, he had to duck past the roaming security bots, slide between patches of dim blue streetlights, and do his best to unobtrusively check into the Shipyard buildings while avoiding tripping over rubble.

So far, he had discovered nothing worse than a couple non-sentient scavengers rustling through waste bins and scampering away at his arrival. It was both relieving and distressing, and he wished that he'd come better prepared than he had.

Two emergency, high-powered sigils embossed on paper and a small, biodegradable plastic round inscribed with Alcor's summoning circle hung heavy in the front pouch of his dad's jacket, which was just a size too big for him. Bentley looked down at the watch he had borrowed from his father shortly before dinner and then up at the next warehouse. It was late, and he didn't think that coming back in after curfew was going to make his father happy.

He pursed his lips under his paper mask. There was no guarantee that he would find any cults tonight anyways, he told himself. The information that he and Torako had gathered had pointed to another attempt being made anytime this week, and it was just Tuesday. Bentley mulled it over, then turned to leave.

Inside the warehouse, something shifted, and a voice reached Bentley despite the noise-dampening wards around the building.

Without thinking about it twice, he slipped around the back of the building and withdrew the light package of compressed charcoal from his pants pocket. Crouching down, Bentley drew a circle just big enough for him to crawl through, then drew an intangibility sigil within the confines of that circle. The moment after, he took the charcoal dust and scribbled an anonymity sign on the back of his right palm. Bentley took a deep breath in, and drew the activation line for the sigil on his skin.

He stared at the sigil on the wall. Shouldn't he call the authorities first? Wasn't there somebody more capable of dealing with this? The voice rose in volume, and he let out a shaky exhale. With fingers that shook just slightly, he raised the piece of compressed charcoal and completed the sigil.

After a deep breath, Bentley slipped through the intangible portion of the wall.

The moment his head cleared the wall, the voice inside rose in volume, shouting and berating and oddly familiar to Bentley. He made sure both feet were on the floor before he slunk over behind the heavy crates of industrial fishing equipment.

"—look at me like that, you stupid woman! I could have dealt with the disapproving looks, but threatening my career by saying you'll let everybody know that I love somebody else? I don't think so!"

Bentley clenched his jaw and moved to the other side of the crates, closer to where the voice was coming from. This already didn't sound good.

"Please don't do this, please," somebody else, another woman, sounded as though she had been crying for a very long time. "Please, if you do it just let Nadeshka go, let her go, she's had nothing to do with this."

The next voice that spoke was lower and deeper. Bentley shuffled closer to the lowest box. "Ma'am, we really need to keep them quiet—the last security bot we trashed wasn't in our district, and we can't afford another cover-up."

As Bentley rose up a little from his knees to take in the scene, the original woman spoke. "All right then, Kingston, gag her. And Nadeshka dear," the figure crouched with her back to him, and there was something horribly familiar about the way she stood and the style of her hair, "are we going to be loud and interrupt Mama's special ceremony?"

Bentley's attention was focused on the little girl, her face streaked with tears and grime and the most awful look of incomprehension. She was maybe five feet away, and he had to remind himself to move very, very slowly; anonymity only went so far.

The woman then stood, and Bentley saw a large man bent over another woman, her bright red hair an oddity on the island. It was then, even before the first woman turned around and he got a good look at her profile, that he knew who she was.

"Nairogi dear, please bring the blood sacrifice." Danielle Sainz, Chairwoman of the Northeastern sector, gestured to another man, who smiled at her with too-bright teeth and too-wide eyes. They glinted in the candlelight from below and the dimmed ceiling lights from above and Bentley found the odd shadows they cast disturbing.

"Of course, my love." The man, Nairogi, came forward, hauling a large bin of water. Within it was a large octopus, its skin shimmering from night sky to nearly completely transparent: a clear indication of its more supernatural heritage. It did not look scared, or angry, or frustrated, and the fact that it was so docile had a chill running down Bentley's neck.

He crept onto the crate, eyes locked on the scene before him. He noticed, as the man who seemed not entirely human dipped his hands into the too-clear water, that there was a large and intricate circle underneath their feet. Slowly, almost in synch with Nairogi, he slid his hand into the front pocket of his father's jacket. Danielle Sainz, the candidate his father had been considering voting for, held her hands out for the octopus, which remained limp and placid as Nairogi let it slide from his hands into hers.

Bentley began to slide Alcor's summoning circle from between the cloth as Danielle Sainz crouched, almost reverent in accepting the small, silver-glinting blade from the other man—Kingston—and sliding it down the octopus's head. Its eyes were half-lidded, but Bentley thought he could see a wild, awful gleam in them, the same one he saw in the woman sacrifice's eyes, and he wanted to scream at them to just stop, stop, just let everybody go.

In the moment before Danielle Sainz slowly, carefully slid the blade edge into the boneless head of the octopus, Bentley felt as though that were him there, that the Councilwoman was dragging the tip of the knife against his skull, dragging through his hair follicles. He remembered an odd bit of trivia from school, something about telepathic defense mechanisms, and the disk with Alcor's emergency circle slid back into his pocket. Bentley stared at the scene before him and couldn't help the breath that caught in his throat when Danielle Sainz finally drove the silver blade into the brain of the octopus. Bentley flinched and grabbed at his head, a little too fast for the anonymity sigil to completely cover his motions, but was undetected due to everybody else feeling the pain as well.

The octopus stiffened and then relaxed again, that violent, anxious gleam leaving its half-lidded eyes blank and unseeing. Blue blood trickled down its suddenly dull, motionless skin and onto the chalk lines, over the packed dirt floor and around the Councilwoman's undoubtedly expensive shoes. She stood, a stony expression on her face as she recovered from the telepathic backlash.

Then she held out her arms, backed up and over her wife and child, and stared up into the air. Both Kingston and Nairogi did the same, but Bentley found that he could not look away from the blue blood surrounding the octopus's prone form. He found himself imagining the blue to be red, imagining himself as the octopus, the woman with red hair as the octopus, the poor little girl as the octopus.

He was shaking, he realized as the chanting began. He was in over his head, he realized as he looked at the human sacrifices. Eyesight blurring a little, he swallowed back the ball in his throat and went to pull out the disk again. Bentley was about to prick his finger when he heard Alcor's name.

Eyes wide, Bentley watched for a moment as nothing happened. In that moment, he hoped that Alcor had refused the summons, that he was going to send his answering machine, that if he came, he would refuse the summoners. He hoped so hard his heart hurt more than it already did, and he clutched to the circle with all his might.

Then the shadows swelled and a man appeared in the center of the circle.

"W̸̦̠͎ͥ͋ͨ̕h̴̡͓̫͔͋͑o̴̼̥̘̖̮̩̳ͭ̌͋͋ͭ͑̀ ̷̧̨̱̔̂͊d̪̤͖̩̯͉̈ͫ͗̄̈́a̵̷͚̰ͤ̀̊ͤͨ̄͂r͋̏̅̓̃͗̚͏̠̘͎̫͈̝̳e̴̳͎̯̥̬͚̗̔͂ͅs̭̱̠͙̙̣͍ͭ͛͐̇̂ͦ͘ͅͅ ̰̻̩̰͉̻̑̇ḋ͉̭͚̳̞̩͙̻͎̎̂̑̕i̧͈̞̳͖͔̭ͣ̓ͮ̓̄̽ș̴̰̩̟̽͒͊̏̈̈́ͧ͘t̶̡̮͙̞̯̱̯̠̞ͤ̔u̶̸̹͕̿̎̄r̷̩̼̪̣̖̟̪̺͐̈́̑ͫ̀bͭ́͗̓͏҉̲̙̦̻̗ͅ ͎̙̜ͧͪ͠A̵͙͈̤̣͍̺͈ͧ͐̊̄̂̄̕l̯͍̯̦ͫͯcͧ҉̻͔͓̳͍̞͈͔̬͢ǫ͖̩̙̯ͦ̄̾̽͗ͫ̓̾́͡r̸͚̮͈̻͚̜̰̆͐̏͊̅ ̛ͧ̑͝͏͖̬̯̦͙̝̣͔t̢̨̝͓̮̤͌̋̐̄ͩ̔̃̕h̘̖̟͇ͯͮ͘ě̴̖͇͉͎͍̂̑ ̲ͩͥ̓̊Ḑ̱͓̳͔̣̎ͥͩ̐͌r̯̥̫͓̠͕̙ͧ̅ͧͦ̅̆ȩ̶̵͈̪͚̹̺̰̍ͩa̭͕̗̦͎̜͕̰̔̇̃͑̒͊m̷̸̳̬͔̉̍ͪͫ͑̃b͖̩̩̹͕̗̤̬͓̓ͥͩͣͣͬ͗̚e̖͇̱͖̦̯͔̰ͧ͒͂͋͐̓͑̋̕n̗͖͉̟͈͓͇̓́̌̒̎̈d̷̖̭̪͔͇͓̑̆̐̾̒̀é̸͈̫r̸̮̥ͮͥ͊̄̚?̗ͤͭͪ͑̉ͧͪ̈̀"

It was Alcor. But at the same time, it was Alcor in all the ways that Bentley did not know him—the demon was not facing him, but rather the two sacrifices and Councilwoman Sainz. He could tell that Alcor was colder, stiffer, more dangerous than Bentley had ever seen him.

The fact stunned Bentley into inaction.

Unsurprisingly, Councilwoman Sainz spoke up, eyes dark and shoulders set back confidently. "It is I, Lord Alcor, Chairwoman Sainz. I would offer you a deal if it pleases you."

Alcor was quiet a moment. Bentley thought that maybe he was thinking of ways to refuse; her words were certainly open-ended enough.

"M̴̥̾̀͒̏ͬo̗͋͗ͪ͡sͫ̅̃͏̹ṯ̵͉͎̜ͯ̊̎ͬ͑ ̴͖̝̟̌̿́ͫd̮̺̦͍̜͔͍̿̈ͭͣͬ̽͡o̘ͦ̾̇̈́̏̅̏,̥͇̩̳̹̥̭̈́ͤ́͒" he said. "S̴̀o̢͟͞?̡ ҉̶W̨̕h̢a̕͏̸t͝ ̀í͏s̕ ͘t̵͘͞hì̷̴s͡ of́f͡er̡͘͏ ͏͠o̸҉́f́͟ ͠҉ýo̕u͘rs̀͢?̵"

It was the reverberation, Bentley thought. The way that Alcor's voice was a tangible thing on the air, pulling at the shadows and thickening them, tugging on his mask and clothes and making them feel as though they weighed the world. That is what made this Alcor so alien and inhuman, and Bentley found himself arrested by the need to never see Alcor like this again.

Danielle Sainz gestured at the two shaking forms before her. "The lives of these traitors—my wife and our child—for the success of my political career for the rest of my life."

Alcor's wings twitched, and Bentley remembered Alcor screwing up his nose at the claim in one of Bentley's history texts that the demon enjoyed eating children. "That's sick," he had said, a sneer tugging at his nostrils and gold irises glowing. "I hate it when people use children in summonings; how much more awful of a person can you _be_?"

He wouldn't do it, Bentley thought, relaxing. It was Alcor. As much as he could be overbearing and annoying and frustrating, Bentley could trust Alcor with this one thing.

"S̢͞o̵͡͡ ̀ĺ̕͠et̷̛͝ ̷̨͞m̀͠e͡ ͠g̷e͢t͡ ̧͝ţ̀͡hi̡҉s̛ ̢͠ś̴͘t̶̷̴r҉͟a̡ì͝g̀ht̴͞," Alcor said, shifting so that his hand was in the air. Bentley stiffened at the edge of the crate. "T̴w̷̧o̸ l̨͘͏i̕ve̷̶̛s҉̕ ̧i̕͢n̵͘ ̸̷̸o͏p̛po͝s͞i̛҉t̀҉i̸҉on̸ t̛̛o҉̶ ́͠y͢͡ǫ͘u͡r҉s͡͞ ̕͟in͏̕ ͞e̕x̸̨c͞ḩa̧nǵ͜͢è̷͢ ̢͞f҉o̡͏̧r̛ su͡c͏c̴̛͢e̸s͝҉͜s̵̡ ͝iǹ͞ ̀͞y͢͏ou̵̢͝r̨͠͝ c̨̀a̶rée͟͡ŗ ̴̵f̴o͏r͝͝ t̕͘he r̶̸̨e̵͞s̡̕t̸͢ ̸̢͢o̶͘f ̴̨҉y̛͜o̷uŕ͡ ̨͡͝ļ̴̨ife̴͘͢?̶͡"

He couldn't do it, Bentley thought, but his jaw clenched and the disk in his hand slid down ono the crate with a dull, quiet thunk. It cut open his palm as it did so, but he did not notice the pain.

Danielle Sainz thought for a moment, looked at Nairogi, and then back at Alcor. She held out her hand. "Yes, that sounds acceptable. This is how we seal the deal, right?"

No, Bentley thought.

"Y̰̜̖͚͙̮̻̥͖̑̃ͣͮͯ͂ͤ̋̐͞ȅ̸̢̫̹͉̭̭̹̹ş̩̜̱͓͙̭͊͗́͌ͩ́,̤̤̭̘́̐ͦͣͫͫ͘͡" Alcor said. He began to shift, to lift his hand, and Bentley thought, He's doing it.

Before their hands could touch, Bentley had slid off the crate and darted the few meters forward. He ignored the surprised gasp that Danielle gave as he bypassed the circle and withdrew one of his stun sigils, slapping it on the ground and smearing a quick, simple activation line with the blood on his palm.

"Wha—"

The figures around the edges of the circle, in addition to Alcor—the traitor, the deceiver, the liar and why had he _ever_ trusted a demon?—were forced to a halt by the power of the sigil. A snarl on his face, Bentley scooped up the knife still stained blue and crouched by the red-haired woman and her daughter.

He cut their hands free, and the woman stared up at him as though he weren't there. Instead of waiting, he pulled them both to their feet. "Run!"

Without waiting another second, Bentley tugged them forward. Two steps in, the mother had pulled her young daughter into her arms and was at his side, running as fast as she could. They made for the entrance of the building.

They were really going to make it, Bentley thought, and pushed himself harder. The door was so close, they could get out, they could leave, they could grab the attention of a security bot and—

Bentley felt the sigil break far sooner than it should have. A second later, Alcor was in front of them, anger written across his face and in the tense line of his shoulders. Bentley caught Alcor's eyes with his own, and the cold rage there had every warning instinct in his body telling him to fucking run until he died.

Pushing down a shriek of fear, Bentley tapped on the sting of betrayal and changed direction to try to move around the demon rather than through. The more he thought about it the more furious he was, and Alcor did not seem as frightening anymore in the face of that anger.

"Go, go, go!" He screamed at the woman and the girl—Nadeshka, he thought—pushing them forward and to the side.

"No!" Councilwoman Sainz yelled, and he didn't dare look back at her. " _NO!_ "

A split-second later, Alcor let out a horrible, mind-numbing and heart-stopping growl. The instance after that, Bentley was stopped, tripped by what seemed to be tendrils of shadow seeping through the floor and curling around his wrists. He hit the ground hard, his right shoulder breaking the awkward fall. Something twisted or snapped and pain shot down his arm and across the side of his chest.

He let out a short scream that was quickly cut short by a shadow sliding over his mouth. Bentley tried to twist and squirm out of the hold of whatever magic this was, but eventually he was stuck to the floor, forced to look up at the ceiling and fail to ignore his aching, throbbing shoulder. Tears fell out the corners of his eyes and soaked into his mask, and he was distantly glad for the dim lighting and the fact he'd chosen a black paper mask.

The little girl, he realized, was crying, and her red-headed mother was letting out muffled screams, but he couldn't find it in himself to do anything louder than whine with every exhale. And somebody was talking, loud and berating, and then there was the thrumming voice of Alcor, cutting her off and saying something else, something about the 'the third for catching yours' and 'be glad I'm not asking for more' and there was something very wrong about this.

"No," he finally said around his aching jaw. He tilted his head to the side to look at Alcor. "No. No." But it all came out as muffled white noise.

"B̵̛͚̦̳̫͙̫̻͎ͨ͗̈ͣ̕e͈̲̳̤̟̼̟̳̔̉̊͗̾͐̐̿̎͡͞ ̷͇͓̺̺̲̹͆̈͛̋̂͋̃̔͌s̔̇̍͏̜͔̻̗̮̠̹͉̲i̠̲͚̲͔ͧ͂̀̀͡l̹̬͛ē͇̫̖̼̄ͭņ̸̹͙̟͔̳̠̭͎͛̈̄̚t̼͙̘̒ͨ̾ͮ̉̊ͫ̽̕,ͫ͋͋̔̓̚͟҉̬̟̘̠̖̫̪͎ ͋̑͢͟͏̞ẏ͉͓͖͎͔̻̩̩ͪ̐̈́o̢͙͙͖̅ͮͮͦ̌u̢͔̝̖ͯ̇͑̃," Alcor said, and then he disregarded Bentley. Disregarded him as though he were nothing, as though he hadn't spent the past few months professing his desire to be by Bentley's side and prove that he was really getting better at the 'humaning thing.'

Bentley felt a fresh wave of anger overcome him and he strained to push himself up, fury overcoming pain and stretching the shadow tendrils holding him down.

Then he blinked, and Alcor was there, in front of him, cold and distant but also livid, and then he said, "D̨͈̖̣̰̀͛ͩͭọ̜̟͎̄̃̓̾͊͑̽̚̚w̫͕̺̬̔̅͡ṉ̳͔͙̭ͩ̈̀̓͠,̸̷̪̻̲͇̦̟̽ͥ͒̃ͥ́"

With all the fiber of his being, Bentley knew he did not want to back down, and most certainly not at the order of this double-tongued, snake-eyed bastard. He snarled, and then snapped at the shadow covering his mouth. Something splintered and broke in his mouth, shards sending tingles of numbness through his tongue and gums, but the surprised expression Alcor made was worth the awful taste and the lack of feeling.

Alcor growled back, narrowed his eyes, and then snapped his fingers. Bentley suddenly felt light-headed, as though he was watching himself relax and fall down obediently, fingers lax and body motionless save for the rise and fall of his chest. Even the pain in his shoulder was dulled as his head tipped back and he saw the ceiling again.

The demon spoke again at last, but not to Bentley. " D̙͉̖͉͒̌͛̂ͬ̀́ô̻͘ ̪͎̣̣͚̇̽͗̓̓ͭ͑ẅ̪̥̻̦ͮe̜̮̭̬̲̭̅ͥͮ̚ ̣͓͎̂̈́ͪͯĥ̢̙̟̝̈̅̽̍̎̀a̢̰̥͍̪̗̠ͧ͛ͭ͋͊̋ͥv̫͍̝̳ͤͬ̂̒ȇ̠͓̝̭̲͈ͩ̎ͩ͗̍ ̙̩̼̀̐ả̻̗̲̪̑ ͕̪̹͉̪̠͎͒̊ͦ̓́͑͜d̟̼̟̼̩ͨ͊̆ͥͫe͒́͜ȁ̢̖̀ͤͧḷ̪́ͣ͑̍͌ͮͯ͟,͔̤̝͙̍̔ͩͨͯ͛̕ ͙̒ͧͨͣͮ D̸̝͈͕̦̠̪͎ͣ̓a̖͈̟̝̦̎n͑̊͊i̮͈̮͖̠̘ẽ̀́̅͒̏͒̀ḷ̳̼̦̌͗ͩl̲̗̯̖̩̲̜̉̐ͥe̖̫ͫͯ̽̀̇͑̓ ̭̩͖̊́͋S̞̰͕̥̄ͥ͌̚ä̠͓̩̦́i̦͋ͬ̽n̮̗̗͉͔ͯz̡̭̼̙̺̞ͣ̂?͔̙̠͛ͮ̿͘"

Bentley tried to rally, focused as hard as he could on moving, but he could not. His body was not his anymore. _His body was not his anymore_. He wanted to scream, wanted to screech, to thrash to smash to cry, but all his body did was breathe slowly, in and out, in and out.

Everybody was silent for a moment. Then Bentley heard the shifting of clothing and Danielle Sainz saying, "For the three you have restrained, deal."

Blue illuminated the ceiling, the same blue that had lit his own room when Alcor had played with it, forming objects and running it over his knuckles and pouting when Bentley declined to touch it himself. Bentley felt an echo of pressure around his limbs and wondered what it might be as the fire blazed brighter and the red-haired woman and her child let out sounds of distress.

Then black tendrils began wrapping over his face and he found himself unable to react, unable to scream, unable to breathe. The pain had been dulled before, but now it grew, spreading out from his arm in a rush of stinging needles that dug into his skin and then widened the holes, stretching them apart until he felt like a sieve. It was hot and cold all at once, as though he were being stuffed down a tube and being pulled apart at the same time, and there was a growing ache in his center wherever his center was that grew brighter and brighter until he couldn't take it anymore and just quit.

* * *

Bentley blinked, or at least he thought he did. There was nothing around him, just inky darkness; he looked down, or he imagined he did, but did not see anything of himself. He tried to hear, but there was nothing. He tried to open his mouth and scream, but he couldn't feel if he succeeded or not. There should have been that same, rancid taste on his tongue, but there was no hint of it. No scent of fish or brine, of blood or musk, of pine or bitter herb.

He tried to reach out with his hands to grasp something, anything. Just to touch it, just to feel it. Hell, he wouldn't mind if it was another of Alcor's inside-out mice! He just needed to feel something, to know it wasn't just nothing even though it clearly was and—

There was a rushing in his ears, like the sound his heart made when he ran too hard, and at first he felt at ease. And then it grew louder, and louder, and it became so fast he was sure he would be dead if it were really his heart and he couldn't take this, he couldn't take the nothing and the noise that wasn't noise and he couldn't.

There was nothing surrounding him, nothing in him, and Bentley had the horrible, sinking feeling that he too was made of nothing. That his most gruesome nightmares would never live up to this and that his greatest dreams would never drown it. That he didn't exist, he was just a figment of his own imagination, that there was actually nothing where he was and—and the conscious of Bentley Farkas shut down.

* * *

With a terrible squeezing sensation that made Bentley feel as though he was being ripped apart and stitched back together, he was suddenly in air again, under a moon that felt too bright and with grass scratching against the oversensitive skin on his hands. The intensity of the sensation of sight and touch and the smell of rain in the air caused Bentley to think, momentarily, that he was hallucinating, that this was a cruel trick of nothing and that he was still nonexistent.

Then he took in another handful of gasping breaths, and each one reminded him that no matter what he had done in the nothing, he hadn't been able to breathe. Bentley ripped his mask off and let the pieces flutter onto the ground, kneeling over and pressing his face to the earth.

The blades of grass hurt and the smell was so strong he could taste dew and plant and dirt on his tongue; he was alive and he was feeling and he was so afraid that if he pulled away it would all go, back into the void and he would be alone again.

He pulled in another breath, but this one came out not as a rattle but as a choking sob. The tears were acidic against his cheeks, the rush of air through his mouth cold enough to make his teeth hurt. There was only a light breeze, but the rustling leaves shifted in his ears at an unbearable volume, and the scent of pine wafted from the air around him into his nose and he couldn't deal with how much it was. It was so much, too much, but it was a thousand times better than the lack of sensation that he didn't know if he was crying from fear or joy or pain or some combination of all three.

The longer he knelt there, fingers digging past the roots of the grass and embedding themselves in the dirt, knees pressing against thin black fabric against matted downtrodden plants, the more aware he was that this was real. Slowly, painfully, his breaths began to even out and his heart began to get over the rush of being again.

He went to push himself up again with his arms, but when he did, his shoulder felt as though it had literally burst into flames and he started to topple over with a gurgled scream. Before he hit the ground with his face, however, he was caught gently by the good arm and carefully lifted into a sitting position.

Bentley looked up at the person across from him and saw Alcor.

Unbidden, he screamed for real, the sound ringing in his ears with ten times the force of the emergency weather siren. Scrambling back as well as he could on three limbs, Bentley heard himself start to shift from a wordless cry into a litany of 'no's.

"Wait," Alcor said, and the irritation in the plea had Bentley's hair standing on end and saying _he's going to kill you_. "Bentley, I—"

"Get away from me!" Bentley surged to his feet and took a few staggering steps backward. Walking hadn't used to be this hard, but the ground was too stable under his feet and he felt as though there wasn't enough support from the air around him. "Get away, you monster!"

Alcor visibly flinched, but then his shoulders squared and he took a few steps forward. His expression was set and stony, but Bentley could just see the roiling emotions underneath and they scared him. "Bentley, let me explain."

"No," Bentley said, and shuffled a bit further away. "No. No. No."

"Bentley, please, just let me tell you what I was _doing_."

Bentley half-fell on his injured shoulder against the nearest tree and bit down to reduce the scream to a strangled yelp. "I don't need to know anything from you! I don't—I don't even know who you are!"

Again, Alcor was taken aback, but he surged forward again, more confident than ever and brimming with anger. "Bentley, you're hurting yourself, just let me—"

The moment Alcor's hand moved in Bentley's direction, Bentley pivoted and ran, staggering and ungraceful but away. He only had a few moments before Alcor was once again in front of him and he was captured, Alcor's hands around his good wrist and side.

"Bentley, _listen to me_!"

The teenager just tipped back his head and screamed, pushing his body weight away from Alcor with his feet. "Let me go let me go let me go!"

Alcor brought him closer, and if Bentley were in a better state of mind, he would have noticed that Alcor was avoiding his injury. "Bentley, I will, just please—"

Bentley, caught in Alcor's arms and heart beating so fast and hard it threatened to burst out through the gaps in his ribs, snapped his head up and clamped his jaws as hard as he could around Alcor's bicep. The cloth tasted old and gross, but he didn't think he'd broken the skin until something warm and acidic seeped out, the tang of iron there but with something else in the mix, something Bentley couldn't recognize and didn't care about recognize because he wanted to be. let. go.

The demon let out a cry somewhere between pleasure and pain and all but ripped his arm away from Bentley's reach. Galvanized, Bentley raised his knee and rammed it between Alcor's legs, then reached around with his head to snap at Alcor's other arm in mindless fear and fury. He missed by mere millimeters.

"E̡̛̮̭̫͍͇͖͋͛̓͐ͭ̊ͤ͛̚N̨ͪͫͬ͗̆ͯ̉͛̆̿̆̕͏̘̥̟̮̫͟ͅO̴̡̎́͋ͮ͒ͯ̃ͫ̊͊̊͊̇̎͆̇͞͏̡͍͙̹̺̼͙͔͇͈U̥̤̖̼̟ͭ̓̽ͣ͂ͨ́͟G̣̫̳͔͈̣̳͇̰̼̰̖̼̜̋͐̐̉̌̏̓́ͥ̈́́͟H̷̛̥̹̦͍̝̥͎̺͓̞̙͉̥̺̗ͯ̑̍͂̂̉̈̄̾̈ͮ̐͘ͅͅ.̴̘̫̞̳̲͚̥̹̠̳͇̻̥̪ͥ̐̓̉ͣ̎ͤͩ̔͑̎ͣ̄ͧ̑̃͋̚ͅͅ"

The echo in the voice only pushed him to try again, harder and more accurate. This time, Bentley snapped up at Alcor's chin, thinking that breaking through exposed skin might persuade Alcor to let him go.

But mid-motion, Bentley stopped, despite wanting to keep going, and Alcor stared him in the eyes. "M̹̘͇̪̠̖͑̈i̢ẓ̖̬ͥ̅a͕̹͓͍̰͒ͩ̄ͯ̈́̉̽ͅȓ͖ͩ̎ͣ̄͂̓.͈̣͚̄̾̐͊ ͤCͫ̉̈͆̋ȁ̫̠̱͒̄͑ͨl͊ͪm̜ ͙̙̬̽ͯͮ̑ͪͦ̀t̵̠̱̮̪̞̹̱h̹ͥ͛eͭ̿ͦ ̤̖̦̋͒ͣ̔̂͒ͅf̧͙̪̼͓̱̝͊̆ͤ͊͊͛̊u̥ͩͧ̂͊͡c͓̎̈́́́̉ͣ̚ḳ̣̜͕͍̃̌̒͆̈͌ͅ ̗̺͖͖̞͉̖̓̽͘d͍̲̫o̧͙ͭ̓ͨ̐ͪͥ̚w̞̩ͨň̤̩̀̑̈́̌ͨ ̳ͬͅa̻̟̜̾ͧ́̐ͭͩ͡n̨͔̐d̳͉͎̘ͫͪͣ̀ͦ̏ͪ̀ ͉̞̝̪͓͚͒ͥ͂̓̅ͮ͞ _l̯͓̟͕ͥ̅̈͆i̮̺̘̳͠s̻̩̥̊̇ͫͣͧ̾ͨt̡͚ͧͫe̦̠̻͊̀̽̄͡n̠̘̄ͥͫ̀_.̸̩̺̩̯̻̼̎ͥ̌"

Bentley tried to move again, tried to just tilt his head back or slam his forehead into Alcor's stupid jaw or even twitch his hand, but nothing happened. Instead, he sat down, mirroring Alcor's motions in a way that was eerie and wrong and he didn't like it.

The moment he felt the sway loosen, he thought about bolting. But he couldn't move his legs or arms, and just fell over. Alcor let something out like a sigh, and then moved over. To Bentley's incredulity, the demon actually sat on his chest, knees on either side of his ribcage keeping the worst of the weight off Bentley.

Bentley felt tears form in the corners of his eyes and drip down his cheeks, falling into the contours around his ears and dripping down his neck and into the bottom of his scalp. He breathed in, then clenched his jaw to stop the terrified noises burning in the back of his throat from coming out.

"Will you listen?" Alcor asked.

He didn't answer verbally, but he thought several disparaging things about lack of autonomy in the situation. Bentley looked anywhere but Alcor's face.

"Look. Bentley. I know it looked bad, and I never wanted you to see me like that, but I had things under control. I knew what I was doing."

Bentley frowned, opened his mouth, and then closed it.

Instead of moving on, however, Alcor was quiet for a moment. When it was clear that Bentley was not going to say anything, he asked, "Did you want to say something?"

He snarled and grit his teeth. "Not like you even care bout it."

"What? No, I—of course I care about it. Bentley, look at me."

"No."

Alcor bent over until his face was a decimeter away. "Bentley."

Frustrated, Bentley avoided looking at Alcor: first by moving his eyes, then his head, and then just shutting his eyes so that he didn't have to see anything at all.

The demon let out a wordless growl, but the pressure on Bentley moved back, and Bentley opened his eyes again. He said nothing.

A note of irritation filled Alcor's voice. "I suppose I'll keep talking then. Again, unlike a child who has never done this sort of thing before and has never actually _worked_ with me the way past Mizars have, I knew what I was doing."

The derision there snapped Bentley's resolve not to interact with Alcor. He opened his eyes and stared right at the demon. "Well, it sure looked to me as though you were about to kill two innocent people because somebody wanted something stupid."

"That's what I wanted them to believe!" Alcor crossed his arms over his chest and leaned back. "That's the point of twisting a deal, is that you fool people into believing one thing and saying another."

"That doesn't explain why you went and _chased us_ after your deal was null and void." Bentley raised himself up on one elbow, the other laying uselessly beside him. "So, oh great one, what was your reason for cooking that up if not because _you were planning on killing them in the first place?_ "

Alcor bared his teeth, and Bentley was reminded that yes, the other did in fact have two sets of very sharp dentures. "Says the idiot who rushed in without a plan beyond stun and run."

"I was doing the best I could!" Bentley protested, craning his neck up and hating that he was shaking with the effort of keeping it there. "At least I was trying to save them!"

"And if you'd listen for a single _millisecond_ , you would know that I was in the process of doing so when you bumbled through and screwed everything up!" Alcor smacked his open palm against the ground, eyes glowing brighter.

Bentley pursed his lips. "If you were, why didn't you let them go?"

"Because that woman needed to be screwed over, and you needed to be kept safe!" Alcor ran a clawed hand through his hair, the edges of wrinkles starting to morph his face into something around Bentley's dad's age.

"So screwing somebody over is more important than saving people?" Bentley's lip started to curl. "Oh yeah, I see that you're trying to be _more human_."

"One, humans aren't all saints," Alcor snarled. "In fact, as we just saw in the case of the woman who sacrificed a rare, magical being in order to summon me so that I would kill the threats to her career even though they were family, they can be damn disgusting. Two, in case your sorry ass didn't hear it, I was _trying to keep you safe_."

Bentley laughed. It wasn't a nice one. "That's right, because you're a glorified stalker who can't leave me my own personal space because apparently you're afraid that I'll die from stubbing my toe or something stupid."

"With that attitude, I'm surprised you haven't already."

"Not that that would have mattered," Bentley continued, his hyped-up senses only just beginning to dull down to something normal, "seeing as you nearly killed me yourself."

Alcor had the nerve to appear contrite. "I didn't—it was the only way to get you out safely. They had to think that I'd consumed you."

"Consumed—you _ate_ me?" Bentley sat up, causing Alcor to lean back. He stuck a finger in Alcor's face; while part of him was freaked by the possibility that it might be snapped off, the rest was too angry to care. "That was your _stomach_?"

The demon's wings bristled behind Alcor's back. "Well excuse me for getting your sorry ass out of a nasty situation the only way I could."

"Again, you could have let us go and then we wouldn't _be_ in this situation."

Alcor batted Bentley's hand aside, his wings moving even further up, the tips reaching his head and fanning out. "No, you wouldn't—instead, you would have been chased by that woman and her very powerful, very sly lover. If she didn't find the three of you, she was going to hijack the school travel lines anyways in a last bid for meaningful sacrifices and you could have been killed then."

"What?" Some of Bentley's anger faded. "But—Danielle Sainz, she's the. She's the candidate who supports education and kids. Why would she…"

After a moment, Alcor stood, stepped over Bentley, and then sat down beside him. "Because she wanted to succeed beyond all else, and sometimes sacrifices are needed."

"But why…why _us_?" Bentley dug his fingers in the grass, and ripped out a few strands.

"Things closer to the heart are more valuable. That's why she was willing to offer her family up, and it's why her blood sacrifice was powerful enough to drag me into her circle; it was the creature's pain, yes, but everybody else's pain as well." Alcor's wing made a motion to curl around Bentley, but the latter scooted away and it slowly retreated back to Alcor's side.

Slowly, the anger dulled to a simmer, and the fear started to creep back into his chest. Bentley drew his knees up and wrapped his good arm around them. He did not look at Alcor.

They were both quiet for several moments, which Bentley took to try to avoid thinking about Alcor's stomach. He seized on the way that the tropical trees looked familiar, how that particular ilima bush seemed oddly shaped.

"…is this the park on my apartment building?"

"Yes. I thought it might help."

The breeze wasn't quite as loud anymore. Bentley half-wished it was, just so that it would drown out the silence.

"Smorple really isn't your color."

Bentley felt a flash of irritation. It rose out of the fear just long enough for him to say, "I _hate_ it when you do that."

"Do what?" Alcor shifted next to him, and Bentley had to scoot away from that wing again. "What am I doing?"

He finally looked at Alcor. The demon seemed as open and earnest as he'd ever been, but Bentley could not unsee cold eyes and shifting shadows. "You're not looking at me, you're looking around me."

Alcor was confused for just a moment, and then clarity struck his features. He lifted his hand to his chin, and Bentley remembered them snapping and himself losing control of his body. "Oh, you mean reading your aura. What's wrong with that?"

Bentley put his face in his knees and took a deep breath in. He was finally getting used to the pain in his shoulder, but knew logically that moving it would only bring the pain back. "Nevermind."

There was another shifting noise beside him, and then Alcor said, "Can I see your face?"

He tilted his head to the side, but didn't lift it. If Alcor really wanted to see, he'd just make Bentley do it. There was nothing Bentley could do to stop him.

Even at the beginning, when he had first met Alcor, he hadn't felt quite this helpless.

"Okay," Alcor said. Nothing else happened, and Bentley couldn't stop his eyes from stinging with relief. He wasn't feeling that tell-tale lightheadedness, the sensation of being a stranger of his own skin, but even the thought of possession was terrifying.

"Do you mind if I ask you some questions? You don't have to answer."

Bentley grit his jaw and tilted his head again. He was shaking a little, from a maddening mixture of fear and anticipation, but he clenched his fist to stop himself as much as possible.

"Do you want to know what happened to Sanya Sainz and Minna Sainz?"

Eventually, Bentley nodded. He slowly pulled in a breath, and let it out the same way, lips pursed.

"Well, I took them to Sanya's parents. Their house, at least; it's in the Canadian Provinces of America, so Danielle Sainz won't be able to find them easily." Alcor paused. "Unfortunately, in order to make a deal, I have to get something out of it. According to the terms, well…I own their lives. Not their souls, but their lives."

Bentley lifted his face enough to say, "How's that different?"

He heard Alcor's wings rustle. "It's…when you own a soul, it's an insane amount of energy. You can keep it and control a person. You can devour it and remove its energy, delaying its reincarnation for ages. I've seen souls take centuries to recover."

When he imagined that happening to him, imagined the process of being ripped apart piece by piece and compared it to what he had just felt, Bentley felt nauseous. His gag reflex kicked in and he pushed his legs out, twisting to the side just in case he did throw up.

Alcor was immediately over him, hovering and babbling some useless platitudes and questions and Bentley recoiled, falling onto his uninjured side.

"No, no, go away, no, go away." Bentley pushed himself back before looking back up at Alcor, expecting to see the demon fuming and frustrated.

Instead, he seemed to have moved back, some unrecognizable emotion on his face, wings held closer to his sides and making him appear smaller than before. "I—okay. I'm going back over here, okay?"

Bentley watched, still breathing short, shallow gasps, over his bad shoulder, as Alcor settled back down on the ground, hands held in his crossed lap and wings folded up along his sides. He stayed in that position, shoulders carefully relaxed, as Bentley slowly pushed himself back upright.

"Bentley, I—"

"Keep going." Bentley pushed his face back into his knees.

Alcor was subdued when he did so. "Owning a life just means that if I need extra energy, I can just…take their life energy. I own it, so it's mine to use. If I don't use it, that's my choice, but it still belongs to me."

"Can you do that to me?"

"No. It's different." Alcor paused. "I…I'm not going to use theirs. I don't need it."

Bentley couldn't help but let out a short scoff. "Oh?"

The demon was silent for a long time. Bentley thought that he'd actually left right as Alcor spoke up again. "I never wanted to do that. I never wanted you to see me like that. But you needed to be safe, and there was no other way."

Bentley thought that Alcor had just chosen the easy way, but kept that observation to myself. "Is that why you…"

"Why I what?" Alcor's tone was quiet.

He twisted the soles of his shoes against the grass, felt the strands twist and resist under the thick rubber. "Why you keep stalking me. Leaving me no space to breathe."

The silence was damning.

He didn't say anything either, weary of the whole situation. If Alcor wasn't going to kill him, if he was acting as though Bentley were a scared animal, then he wasn't going to push things.

"…You really do hate it."

Bentley lifted his head and rested his cheek on his knees, staring off into the distance. "It's controlling. And suffocating."

Alcor was very quiet again. This time, he didn't say another word.

The night was getting chillier—even in a region like this, temperatures dropped, and it was now autumn. Bentley shuddered, wiped his eyes against his knees, and looked down at the hand he'd had clasped around his shin. There was dirt under the fingernails, and he imagined that his skin was stained with grass.

"I'm tired," he said.

"Do you want me to tesser you back?"

Bentley shook his head. "No. I…I want to be by myself."

There was a short pause, like Alcor was nodding, before the other spoke. "Okay. Do you want me to come back in the morning?"

"No. No. I don't. Sorry, but I don't really want to see you for a while." Bentley dropped his forehead back onto his knees. "Please leave."

For one horrible, terrible moment, Bentley was afraid that Alcor would just take him down himself, that he would make Bentley stay still so that he could. Instead, there was a short shifting in the air, like the fabric of reality had been shifted to one side and then carefully replaced. When Bentley looked up, Alcor was gone.

Bentley did not move. Not until there were footsteps on the path, and he looked up to see Torako, standing in front of him and looking scared and angry and horrified all at once. A light floated by her face, illuminating her features better than the scant moonlight.

"Torako?" He asked, feeling as though he should stand but not having the energy for it. "What are you doing here?"

"You're so stupid," she said, and knelt down. There were tears in her eyes, he noticed absently, and she didn't make a move to touch him. "You're so stupid. What were you _thinking_?"

He didn't know how to respond beyond "I had to."

Slowly, Torako slid her arm under his good one and around his back, pressing close and placing her chin on top of his head. "You're an idiot. What if I hadn't put that sigil on? How did you even _get_ here?"

Part of him thought that he should be annoyed, but the rest was too exhausted to be. "I'm tired," he said.

She pulled him closer. The motion nudged his shoulder the wrong way, and he sucked in a pained breath. Torako released him almost immediately.

"Bentley? Bentley, what's wrong, what did I do?"

His eyes were beginning to tear up again. "My shoulder," he said, and he heard how thick his voice was. The glowing green light descended after a motion from Torako, and he saw her grow more determined and more upset simultaneously.

"Do you want me to take you downstairs? Your dad's worried."

Bentley opened his mouth to try to respond, but his throat was too tight to reply verbally, so he just nodded.

"Okay. I'm going to pick you up now. Is that all right?"

He nodded again, and lifted his arm. She pulled him up from there, Bentley offering minimal help by pushing up with his legs. From there, she bent down and reached around his upper legs. "Hold on to me."

Bentley sniffed and draped himself over her. He wrapped his arm around her back and clutched the light jacket she was wearing. When she picked him up, her short hair brushed his cheek.

"I'm starting to walk now," she said. Bentley, once more, nodded, and pushed his face into her shoulder. True to her word, she started to walk, her arms a warm cradle under his legs and her back solid underneath his hand.

And if she felt her clothes become damp there, she didn't say a word.


End file.
